arendt

"Some years ago, reporting the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, I spoke of 'the Banality of evil' and meant with this ... the phenomenon of evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness...., and the only specific characteristic one could detect on his part as well as in his behavior ... was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think."